(The Hill/NEXSTAR) – Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R), New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and representatives from the FBI and ATF held a news conference on Thursday to update the public on the New Year's Day terror attack that killed 14 and injured dozens of others.
The briefing comes a day after a driver, identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar from Texas, drove a rented pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street. The incident is being investigated as a terrorist attack after an Islamic State flag was found in the vehicle.
“It was premeditated, and an evil act,” Christopher Raia the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division said.
Raia said Jabbar, an Army veteran, had obtained the Ford F-150 used in the attack on Dec. 30 before driving it from Houston to New Orleans on Dec. 31. During this time, he posted several videos professing “his support for ISIS” to an online platform, Raia said.
A timeline provided by Raia suggested that Jabbar had planted IED devices near the attack site in New Orleans before returning later to ram through a blocked-off area on Bourbon Street, killing 14 people. Jabbar was killed during a shootout with police.
The FBI also currently believes Jabbar acted alone, after saying Wednesday it was possible he had accomplices.
“We do not believe, at this point, these people [seen near the IED devices in surveillance footage] are involved in any way. We want to speak to them as witnesses,” Raia said.
Anyone who may have known Jabbar, and anyone who may have been present near the areas where the IEDs were found, have been urged to call 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit the information online at fbi.gov/bourbonstreetattack.
The FBI has since recovered several devices linked to Jabbar, including three phones and two laptops, the latter from a home in Mandeville, Louisiana. A fire later started at that residence, an official from the ATF said at Thursday’s news conference.
Raia also said there was “no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas," while noting it was still “very early” in the investigation.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the scene of the incident was cleaned overnight, and that Bourbon Street is planning to reopen on Thursday before the Sugar Bowl, which was rescheduled in light of the attack.
“I want to reassure the public that the city of New Orleans is not only ready for gameday today, but we’re ready to continue to host large-scale evens in our city because we are built to host at every single turn,” Cantrell said.
Wednesday morning's attack was the deadliest IS-inspired assault on U.S. soil in years, laying bare what federal officials have warned is a resurgent international terrorism threat. That threat is emerging as the FBI and other agencies brace for dramatic leadership upheaval after President-elect Donald Trump's administration takes office.
Investigators were also trying to understand more about Jabbar's path to radicalization. The FBI recovered a black Islamic State flag from his rented pickup and reviewed five videos posted to Facebook, including one in which he said he originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned that news headlines would not focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers,” Raia said. He also left a last will and testament, the FBI said.
Jabbar joined the Army in 2007, serving on active duty in human resources and information technology and deploying to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, the service said. He transferred to the Army Reserve in 2015 and left in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.
Abdur-Rahim Jabbar, Jabbar's younger brother, told The Associated Press on Thursday that it “doesn’t feel real” that his brother could have done this.
“I never would have thought it’d be him,” he said. “It’s completely unlike him.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
